


The Bewlay Brothers

by bean_allusions



Category: Monty Python RPF
Genre: Angst, David Bowie - Freeform, M/M, Memories, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:34:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26778949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bean_allusions/pseuds/bean_allusions
Summary: Eric remembers Terry, all out of order, but did Terry ever really make sense in order?(Inspired by The Bewlay Brothers - David Bowie)
Relationships: Eric Idle/Terry Jones
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	The Bewlay Brothers

**Author's Note:**

> One of Bowie's lesser-known songs, The Bewlay Brothers is a ballad with lyrics that are, to this day, being debated. Some think it's a gay allegory, others believe it references David's schizophrenic half-brother Terry, and some say the lyrics are nonsense on purpose. No matter the interpretation, it's always entranced me, and I never found it (most of it, at least) creepy as most do. I've been wanting to write a songfic about it for a long time now, but it wasn't until I stumbled on the pairing of Eric and TerryJones that I found the right dynamic. This one hurt my brain a bit to write, but the song was worth it.

Eric sat back, absentmindedly caressing the body of his guitar like he was trying to comfort it, to lull it to sleep. His fingers, well-versed in acoustic muscle memory, formed a D, then an E minor, then A, then back again. He hummed the familiar tune and remembered Terry, his Terry, the memories in no particular order, but then again, Terry as a person was never linear.

* * *

_And so the story goes they wore the clothes,  
They said the things to make it seem improbable  
Whale of a lie like they hope it was_

Terry holding Eric's thin hand in the darkness of the wings before their first show, not daring to look at each other for the risk of being noticed. Caught. They were always able to play it off, somehow, with woven lies embroidered with dismissal if anyone questioned why they were sitting ever so unnaturally close. They were both very good liars.

* * *

_And the good men tomorrow had their feet in the wallow  
And their heads of brawn were nicer shorn  
And how they bought their positions with saccharin and trust_

The night before a pitch meeting, one of the very first, the six of them huddled together in Michael's sitting room planning white lies about how absurd the show was and sounding off impressions of kind, warm, proper gentlemen proposing a television program, laughing at the fact that the absurdity of the show was far outdone by the absurdity of the men acting polite and professional to higher-ups they shared no respect with. Across the room, Terry's eyes flashed laughter at Eric.

* * *

_And the world was asleep to our latent fuss  
Sighings swirl through the streets like the crust of the sun, the Bewlay Brothers_

Fingers intertwined, awake in the minuscule window of time in the early morning hours after Graham and Gilliam and Carol would finally go to sleep and before John and Michael awoke, in the sunrise over the misty Scottish fields. Terry's head rested on Eric's shoulder, silent and melancholic, and Eric pressed his lips to the top of his lover's head, signaling that it was time for their companionship to be paused for the miserable shooting day.

* * *

_In our wings that bark  
Flashing teeth of brass  
Standing tall in the dark_

The passengers-side window rattled Eric's skull as he leaned against it, trying to ignore Terry's incessant cries and accusations as he eased his foot off the gas. Eric knew why they were slowing down. Terry loved to argue, there was no way he would have Eric home before he got his point and all of its divisions across properly. In times like these, where he knew Terry looked like a tall menacing shadow that grew and receded in the passing streetlights, he wished his driver would just do what everyone else did and barrel them down the road in anger without a care and risk their lives. It would be over more quickly.

* * *

_Oh, and we were gone  
Hanging out with your dwarf men  
We were so turned on  
By your lack of conclusions_

The crew in Tunisia, confused and quite literally all over the place, looked up at Terry on the stone pedestal. It was only a set-piece, but it suited him, Eric thought. Terry knew exactly what directions to give them, what to say to paint the masterpiece he'd sketched in his mind. Eric smiled and Terry caught him in the crowd, smirking and looking away.

* * *

_I was stone and he was wax so he could scream and still relax  
Unbelievable  
And we frightened the small children away_

Terry pacing, frustrated, around his home. Alison was upstairs and Eric, sitting up straight and motionless as a rod, looked away from Terry for just a second to see Sally and Bill peeking at their scene from behind the railing of the stairs, their faces not fearful but filled with a childhood curiousness that did not yet know shame. Eric let a small smile come to his lips and he tilted his chin to indicate they should head back up. They listened, disappointment in their faces soon forgotten as they saw their mother waiting once more. Terry, wound as tight as a ten-day clock, finally sprung out at a glass. In a split second, he realized his attack and caught it just as the rim hit the tiled floor, the only casualty being a small chip breaking off. Eric went over and picked it up, holding Terry in a reassuring embrace as they both stood in the kitchen, Terry miraculously calm once more. If Eric ever got that angry, he would be more than a chipped cup. He would shatter. He envied Terry's temper that didn't break him.

* * *

_And our talk was old and dust would flow  
Through our veins and Lo! It was midnight back at the kitchen door  
Like the grim face on the cathedral floor_

Wooden chairs in Eric's kitchen, cigarette smoke surrounding them. He observed the new lines in Terry's face, the graceful greying of his still-dark hair. They had no more to say. Lord knows they had said more than enough for decades. They were old enough to know now, years after a tearful, angry parting in the gardens, that comfortable silence was a gift like no other. They didn't care to reminisce either. There was no need, everything had already happened.

* * *

_The solid book we wrote cannot be found today  
And it was stalking time for the moon boys, the Bewlay Brothers_

They had finished writing for Do Not Adjust your Set at Eric's tiny flat, and they were running through the darkness to the banks of the river. Terry had brought the Canterbury Tales with him to study, and they bored each other by reading out loud like their respective old professors. Eric signed his name over Terry's in the margins of the pages, their hands touching as they leaned on each other. They stripped and jumped, laughing, into the water and Eric noted how beautiful Terry looked in the moonlight, the dark angles of his face glimmering like some Greek statue brought to life. They held each other in the still water, kissing gently and tracing each other's curves, and Terry whispered an admittance of love shyly. Eric took his head in his hands, looked at Terry lit only by the glow of the moon and the stars, and told him he loved him too. They sank deeper into the river, fingers tangling in each other's wet locks.

* * *

_With our backs on the arch  
And if the Devil may be here  
But he can't sing about that  
Oh, and we were gone  
Real cool traders_

Terry seething in the looming green shadows of the garden arches, late at night. Their whispered cries and insults overlapped until only one hung in the air. Terry, a staunch atheist, pointed his finger at Eric's face, too close, and called him the Devil's finest. Terry was yelling through his teeth, and after the final affront, he stared at Eric without an ounce of regret or remorse and walked away. Eric yelled something at him, he couldn't remember if it was an insult or a plea, before he turned away. It was all finally over. He didn't bother to look back. He knew Terry certainly hadn't.

* * *

_We were so turned on  
You thought we were fakers  
And now the dress is hung, the ticket pawned  
The factor max that proved the fact is melted down  
Woven on the edging of my pillow_

The boxes of dresses and boots and other costumes lay, their sorting abandoned, in Eric's bedroom. Eric kissed Terry's neck, completely overcome by their bodies rubbing together, feeling him inside his lover. He pulled away only to look at Terry's face as he climaxed, his muscles tightening and releasing and finally smiling, Terry's eyes still blissfully closed, the folds left from the tight grips of his fingers still embroidered on the lining of Eric's pillowcase. He almost didn't look real, Eric thought, he was so beautiful.

* * *

_And my brother lays upon the rocks  
He could be dead, he could be not, he could be you_

Terry was sick, tired, Eric knew they shouldn't have come for a hike, especially not over the water. He carefully made over the shallow rapids, terrified, trying to reach the rock where Terry had passed out. Eric finally knelt down next to him. Terry wasn't breathing, he lay completely still. Oh, God. He knew they should never have come with Terry feeling so faint. The supposed corpse of his partner, no longer able to play dead, giggled a little. Eric hugged him and scolded, unable to be serious and laughing with Terry. Even when he was weaker than a field mouse, he was ever the practical joker.

* * *

_He's chameleon, comedian, Corinthian, and caricature  
Shooting up pie in the sky  
The Bewlay brothers_

He watched Terry perform his bit as a drunken vicar with all the charm and talent and satire that he'd perfected seemingly before he was even born, walked him out after a night of socialization with the entourage of The Young Ones. Drove in silence and turned the key in the lock, leading Terry up to the room and watching him fall asleep immediately at Eric's side, exhausted. The blond looked through the curtains, still open so he could see the stars. He knew the constellations, once, but their names escaped him many years ago. He made his own shapes in the stars and looked down at Terry beside him, his face abnormally calm, lacking Terry's token extremes of open-mouthed laughter and a deeply furrowed brow. Eric wasn't sure which of the three expressions unnerved him most.

* * *

_In the feeble, in the bad  
The Bewlay brothers  
In the blessed and cold  
In the crutch-hungry dark  
Was where we flayed our mark_

It was cold. The power was out and only the few solitary candles left in Eric's flat, which had essentially turned into _their_ flat, flickered on their faces. Eric was sitting on the ground and had out his guitar, strumming Bowie, barely paying attention until he heard Terry in the armchair above him singing softly with an endearing rasp in his rich voice, smiling and playing with Eric's hair. They were like schoolboys when they got up, took a candle, and ran over to pull up a loose floorboard in the corner of the bedroom. With a paring knife from the kitchen drawer, they carved their names, giggling and kissing, into the flesh of the hidden nook. They could never tell anyone about them, a permanent mark was exhilarating although it was likely no one would ever see it in the future. No one saw them now, so what difference did it matter?

* * *

_Oh, and we were gone  
Kings of Oblivion  
We were so turned on  
In the night walk pavilion_

There was laughter filling the pub, an air of celebration as another final film was approved for production. Eric and Terry slipped away, somehow unnoticed, into the empty dirt paths around the back of the country pub, lit only by the moonlight so bright it gave the effect of the sky being a blue stained glass window and made the world around them look like an open cathedral. Terry leaned up to kiss Eric, gentle at first, then more and more passionate. Eric managed to ignore the fight from the car a few weeks earlier and the fallout that had managed to last until now. The film was approved. Everyone was happy. The private tension would go, for at least a few days. This was nice.

* * *

_Lay me place and bake me pie I'm starving for me gravy  
Leave my shoes, and door unlocked I might just slip away_

Some months after their quiet reconciliation in the kitchen, Eric awoke and noticed the absence of Terry next to him. He went down to the kitchen where the mess of their supper had since been cleaned up, probably by Terry, although he was still nowhere to be found. Eric put on his housecoat and went out to the dewy garden, looking for his lost bedmate with no luck. It was only when he came in that he noticed the note, addressed to him, sitting inconspicuously on the countertop. The last line made it clear. Terry loved him but he wasn't coming back, and he hadn't left an address or a number or anything at all. They'd broken up nearly a decade before and it took years for them to come together again, but this was very much final. Eric fell back into his chair, tears blotching the ink of Terry's goodbye.

* * *

_Please come away_

Eric sometimes saw flashes of Terry in the news after that, or he heard snippets from Michael or John or Hazel or whoever had seen him, but it was never much and it was clear Terry didn't want him to know. In the past year, he hadn't heard anything. For all he knew, either Terry was breaking from the press or he was dead. He'd phoned every address Terry had ever stayed in, every friend that could have taken him in. Eventually, he just started writing letters, updates and feelings, left unaddressed and piling in the corner of his room.

_Just for the day_

It was the only time he ever prayed, tears falling once more, hands clasped over his guitar. He wanted to see Terry again, but more than anything he just hoped he was alright. The phone rang and Eric stood, wiping his tears on his jumper sleeve, ready to return to life as he'd known it since he'd left. "Hello?"

"Hullo Eric. Good to hear your voice" Said Terry softly over the line.

**Author's Note:**

> Although the times of each of the memories are really up for interpretation, here's a list, in order of the story, of each memory and the year I roughly imagined it in.
> 
> Opening - 1996  
> In the wings, British tour - 1973  
> Pitch meeting - 1969  
> Scotland, Holy Grail filming - 1975  
> Car ride - 1982  
> Life of Brian in Tunisia - 1979  
> Terry's home - 1981  
> Eric's kitchen - 1992  
> The river - 1968  
> Breaking up in the garden - 1986  
> Bedroom -1972  
> The hike - 1970  
> Driving home - 1984  
> Power outage - 1977  
> Walk from the bar - 1982  
> Terry leaves - 1993  
> End - 1996


End file.
